Hebrew Word Study – From Old – Marachaq –  מֵרָח֕וֹק Mem Resh Cheth Vav Qop

 Jeremiah 31:3: “The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.

Every English translation I have examined all say that God loves us with an everlasting love except one paraphrase says “I have always loved you.”  Yet, the adjective that is used is ‘olam which is eternal, forever.  Yet, it is not an adjective but a noun. It is a love that is the eternal.  Eternity with God is love, meditate on that one for awhile.  This is a love that is uninterrupted, a love that never ceases for a moment. It stops and then starts or leaves and then returns.  It is a continual love.  That is confirmed by a little play off the word rendered as old.  That word is marachaq with the preposition Mem and really should read as “from old.” But the root word rachaq does not mean old but to be distant. 

Many translators hesitate to render this as distance as that would suggest that God is not omnipresent, that there are times He is distant or that He moves away from us.  The translators that do render this as distant see it as a metaphor.  God only seems distant.  Others, like myself,  see this as a play off the word racham which is the ultimate love God has for humankind. 

For everlasting love God uses the word ‘ahav for love which is a love that can be found in various degrees like our English word love.  You can say you ‘ahav your pet dog Sparky and you ‘ahav your parents.  Same word but different degrees depending on the context.  Racham, however, is a love that is pure, it is a love that has not been challenged, wounded, or abused.  It is a love that a mother has when she holds her newborn baby and expects nothing from that infant except to be able to love it. That infant has yet to challenge its mother or break its mother heart. That love is a pure unoffended love. 

When we sin, God cannot love us with racham, but He can love us with ‘ahav. Our sins are always before us when we face God. We stand before Him impure.  All our righteousness, good works are just filthy rags.  Yet when we accept his offer of salvation and put those sins under the blood of Jesus, it is as if we have never sinned, never offended Him or wounded His heart. They are gone, buried and forgotten.  We stand before Him pure and sinless because of the blood of Jesus. Only the lies of the enemy can stand in our way with God.  

The wonderful thing is that once we have received His forgiveness and accept the atonement offered by Jesus Christ God is then able to fulfill the desire of His heart and that is to love us with racham love.  I’ve written a whole book on racham and I am still writing on racham. The depth of that word will take an eternity to define. 

Therein lies that little word play between racham – perfect love and rachaq a love that is far distant.  God is telling His children that He loves them with an everlasting, nonending, nonstop love ‘ahav.  Yet, in the distant future, once they repent, once their sins are covered by the blood of Jesus, there is even a more pure, deeper love to experience, a love called racham. 

He draws us to this racham love with lovingkindness. The word in Hebrew for drawn is mashak which has a long range of meanings. It could be to draw, to drag, to continue, to prolong or to stimulate. When used with lovingkindness of the word chasad, I like to think that our English word to stimulate fits best.  God wants to stimulate us to seek His love, His racham through lovingkindness. 

What this suggest to me is that God loves us with an everlasting love so that we will always be able to be eligible for His racham love.  His ‘ahav love is only to wet our appetite for more, for a deeper more pure love.  A love that has no barriers and no bounds. A love that is limitless such that we will spend eternity climbing that mountain of His racham love. 

Right now, if we are in a sinful state, we are not eligible for that racham love.  Yet, He still has an eternal ‘ahav for us so that we can gain entrance to Mt. Racham through repentance of forgiveness of our sins and thus, we can begin to climb that new height in love that we have yet to experience. 

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